Another SimCity Mistake: Amusement Park DLC

Maybe you thought that everyone had finally calmed down, that no one was still interested in all of the chaos kicked up from SimCity and it’s 1.6 million upset fans. Well, almost, but not quite yet. Why? Because SimCity just released their first DLC, and they are charging for it.

Technically this isn’t SimCity’s first shot at DLC. If you’ve been playing recently you might have noticed the free Nissan Electric Car Charging Station that you have the option of downloading. But this is supposed to be their first major DLC package, a $10 purchase that let’s players build an amusement park in their city.

Sounds interesting, might be enjoyable, but at $10 what is EA thinking? SimCity isn’t even three months old yet. Not just that, but the game’s launch was a fiasco at best. It feels like just a couple weeks ago I was being bribed with a free title from Origin, because of all the SimCity problems. Now, if I was working for EA, I wouldn’t have admitted fault and started handing out just over 1 million free copies of $60 games. No, I would have apologized, and then said that the downloadable content we planned on releasing and charging for would now be released for free. And the next DLC, and the one after that, too. Personally my strategy would have been to get players focusing on how SimCity will improve over time, and keep them interested in the game instead of shuffling all of the series’s fans onto other franchises.

It’s not that $10 for DLC is that big of a deal. In fact, usually I’d say that’s an understandable price (depending on how big the amusement park pack actually ends up being), but not right now, and not from SimCity. It seems like a ridiculous move on EA’s part.

So here we are, three months after SimCity’s launch, and if you want an amusement park in your city it’s going to come with a $10 price tag. I’m probably just beating a dead horse here, writing about EA’s greedy microtransaction systems and constant, not free, DLC (which EA has stated will be a part of every future EA title), but come on! Has no one from eitherMaxis or EA learned their lesson? Maybe I’ll be one of EA’s few DLC customers, just so I can see what building an amusement park is like… But for now I’m fine sticking with my Nissan Electric Car Charging Station.

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